Power take-off (PTO) may be a common function used in vehicle powertrain management. PTO may provide power to up-fitter installed accessories such as a bucket lift, also referred to as a “cherry picker”, a snow plow, a dump body, etc. PTO is a mechanism or technique, such as using a gearbox or bolt-on attachment, of driving a pump to supply power necessary to provide a function, such as lifting or manipulating the dump body, bucket lift, or snow plow. PTO may be enabled through conventional switching of a single polarity change, such as between an unasserted low, or inactive state, and an asserted high, or active state. Common switching arrangements for PTO enable function, Tap-up function, and Tap-down function include the use of 0 Volts for the unasserted low state and a battery voltage for the asserted high state for each of those functions.
A concern with control of engine operation is with failure modes of communication between various engine components. Compliance with probability of occurrence metrics is generally required to meet safety and performance requirements of various motor vehicle components. A rolling count or other similar failure checking mechanism is currently used to monitor PTO states, but these mechanisms generally require complex software operations. Additionally, failure modes of various conventional PTO states are generally undesirable operating states. For example, the single function switch for cruise enable and PTO enable, previously mentioned hereinabove, defaults to one of the unasserted low state or asserted high state to produce an undesirable condition.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide an engine management system for motor vehicle powertrain applications that has improved failure modes. In addition, it is desirable to provide a control module that communicates with the vehicle powertrain that is simple to implement, accepts multiple input options, and accounts for a variety of communication errors. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description of the invention and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the invention.